mambo no. 5

908. ‘Mambo No. 5’, by Bob the Builder

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Bob the Builder manages what all the other Christmas novelties never could. Benny Hill, Little Jimmy Osmond, Renée and Renato, Mr. Blobby… Few of them managed another hit, let along another chart-topper!

Mambo No. 5, by Bob the Builder (his 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 9th – 16th September 2001

Gone is Lou Bega’s list of women that he’s shagged, replaced with more child-friendly construction items and a lengthy to do list. A little bit of timber and a saw, A little bit of fixing that’s for sure… A little bit of tiling on the roof, A little bit of making waterproof… Bob’s a little bit of a taskmaster, that’s for sure, but his gang seem to be up to the job.

It’s largely more of the same as ‘Can We Fix It?’, just to a different tune. It sounds so much like Bega’s version that I wonder if they aren’t singing over the same backing track. But like the first hit, there’s an enjoyable amount of energy and love put into it. It’s a novelty, but it doesn’t overly grate, and the lyrics are genuinely tight and cleverly put together.

We’ve just had two versions of ‘Lady Marmalade’ at number one with just three years in between, and here are two versions of ‘Mambo No. 5’ in top spot exactly two years apart. Not counting the 1950s habit of releasing different versions of a song at the same time (as with ‘Answer Me’, ‘Singing the Blues’ and ‘Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White’) this must be a record for shortest time between two chart-topping versions of the same song. Though is it the same song? Same title and tune, yes, but completely different lyrics. After ‘3 Lions ‘98’ this is only the second song to make #1 twice with (significantly) different words.

Bob the Builder and his gang would have one further hit, with rave anthem ‘Big Fish Little Fish’, from their brilliantly titled second album ‘Never Mind the Breeze Blocks’, making #81 in 2008. Leaving seven years between albums was clearly a gamble that backfired… Bob the Builder remained on TV until 2008, before being relaunched in 2010. I can’t be alone in finding the CGI animation of the reboot slightly sinister compared to the original stop-motion version. The CGI Bob has never attempted a singing career, and it’s probably for the best. Good to go out on a high.

834. ‘Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…)’, by Lou Bega

/ UK #1s blog / 14 Comments

Ladies and gentlemen…

Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…), by Lou Bega (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 29th August – 12th September 1999

…this is Mambo Number Five. Autumn may have begun while this record was at number one, but the Latin summer of 1999 is still going strong. As with both our previous Latin chart-toppers – ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ and ‘Mi Chico Latino’ – yes, this is cheesy, and yes, this is Latin music with all the raw edges softened. But I challenge anyone to listen to this and not smile, just a bit. And even today, you throw this on at any kids party, or wedding, hell even at a funeral, and the dancefloor will light up.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a mambo at number one. Forty-four years, to be exact, when Rosemary Clooney scored her second chart-topper with ‘Mambo Italiano’ (which was mambo in name more than anything else), and Pérez Prado had an instrumental smash with ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’. It was Prado himself, the King of Mambo, who originally recorded ‘Mambo No. 5’ in 1949. He had also been back in the charts in 1995, despite dying in 1989, when ‘Guaglione’ made #2 thanks to a feature on a Guinness advert.

Lou Bega, a German-born Italian-Ugandan rapper, had the idea to sample ‘Mambo No. 5’ and turn it into a modern pop-rap song while living in Miami, where he had been turned on to Latin music. The brass band, and the shouts, are that of Prado; but Bega added lots of ad-libs, and some wonderfully dated record scratches and tapes-getting-all-tangled-in-the-deck sound effects (kids these days will never know the pain…)

And of course, he also added the words. Seven ladies that went down in history. Monica, Erica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary, and Jessica. There is a particular joy in knowing someone by any of these names, and of trying to crowbar their accompanying line into conversation. I used to work with a Rita (all I need), while I also know a Mary (all night long), but my personal goal is to meet a Sandra (in the sun).

What’s interesting is not just how big this genre of music suddenly became in the summer of 1999, but how much songs like this and ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ remain in the public consciousness, far more than the Westlife’s many ballads and anonymous dance tunes. Lou Bega managed one more minor hit in the UK with the follow-up to this, ‘I Got a Girl’, in which he yet again lists his many girlfriends. He remains active, still dressing like Pablo Escobar on his summer holidays, still peddling his schtick (his most recent release on Spotify samples ‘Macarena’).

Still, he’ll always have ‘Mambo No. 5’. Stick a random pin on a map and chances are you’ll hit a country where this record made #1. In France it was there for a mind-blowing twenty weeks… The success wasn’t all positive though, as Bega and his producers spent seven years locked in a legal battle with Pérez Prado’s estate, before a judge ruled that the writing credits be split evenly. Meanwhile my favourite story connected with ‘Mambo No. 5’ is that it was originally chosen as the theme song for the US Democrats’ 2000 convention, before someone pointed out that having Bill Clinton walk out to A little bit of Monica in my life wasn’t such a hot idea…